Zidane Tribal
Categories: Final Fantasy IX characters | Fictional thieves
| Image:Zidane Tribal character.jpg | |
| Age | 16 |
| Home | His hometown is Bran Bal in Terra but lives in Lindblum |
| Occupation | Thief |
| Skill | Thievery |
| Weapon | Dagger |
| You don't need a reason to help people | |
| Image:Zidane Tribal art.jpg | |
Zidane Tribal is a fictional character in the role-playing game Final Fantasy IX. A member of Tantalus, a group of thieves from the city of Lindblum, he sets off on a mission to kidnap Princess Garnet of Alexandria. The mission goes fatally wrong, and Zidane and his companions, Vivi, Captain Albert Steiner, and Princess Garnet, as well as the entire Tantalus group, are stranded in the middle of a forest. In the Japanese version of the game, his name is Jitan, or Zitan.
Zidane's Character
In contrast to the leads of FFVII and FFVIII, his character was designed to be more playful and flirty, a trend which may have later influenced the personality of Tidus in FFX. At times, Zidane casts himself into the role of a romantic hero, but he only considers himself to be acting a part. In truth, Zidane is extremely lonely and desires a true family, since he was raised by adoptive parents but never knew his own race. In order to search the world and discover his birthplace, he decided to become an adventurer and thief.
Zidane's role as a thieving hero is one of the many ways that Final Fantasy IX follows a traditional theatrical story with the notion that each one of the main characters of Final Fantasy IX is playing a "role" of some sort. Zidane as the thief and hero; Princess Garnet as the heir to the throne; Adelbert Steiner and Freya Crescent as royal guardians who place duty above all else; Amarant Coral as the sardonic bad-ass; Eiko Carol as Zidane's would-be lover; and even Kuja as a misunderstood villain. However, the element that ties each of these characters together is that they actually don't fit their "roles" as well as they might want to believe.
Zidane, for example, tries to be the romantic hero, but only becomes such after he actually falls in love with Dagger. Freya tries to ignore her lovesick heart so that she can protect her kingdom and play the role of a duty-bound dragon knight. Amarant acts cold-hearted at times, even though he's actually innocent of his crime. Eiko tries to act grown up and doesn't consider herself to be a child (she's 6 years old). Even Kuja tries to act out the part of a nefarious stage villain. The only character who is honestly true to himself is Vivi Ornitier, the diminuitive and melancholy Black Mage. It is through the party's friendship with Vivi that he actually learns to take his own life more seriously and be true to who he is rather than trying to figure out what role he was meant to play.
The Life of Zidane Tribal
Zidane began his life as an "Angel of Death" under a man named Garland. Long ago, the people of a planet named Terra realized that their world would soon collapse on itself and that they would be destroyed. As they had done several times before, they planned to save their civilization through assimilation of another planet; this time, the planet was Gaia. The people of Terra left their physical bodies and locked their souls in containers to be watched over by Garland, who was given the task of removing the souls of Gaia's "cycle of souls" and replacing them with Terra's. To do so, he created the Iifa Tree, which was to disrupt souls returning to Gaia (i.e. souls of people who had just died) to prevent them from returning to living bodies. Once the soul cycle of Gaia was empty, Terra would fill the void with its own souls. The Terran souls would then enter bodies called Genomes, who waited patiently on Terra until the time came for them to be the hosts of the Terran souls. To quickly disrupt Gaia cycle of souls, Garland realized that a great catastrophe was needed to kill as many people as possible. To assist him in his endeavor, he gave a soul to a Genome, whom he later named Kuja, and instructed him to be an Angel of Death, whose sole purpose was to find the most destructive and devastating powers Gaia had to offer. Knowing that with a soul, Kuja's body would eventually wither and die, Garland created a second Genome Angel of Death, named Zidane, to serve as Kuja's replacement.
After the Failed Mission
When Kuja finds out that Garland has already selected his replacement, Kuja steals Zidane and drops him onto Gaia in a rage. Kuja resents Garland from that day forward. Zidane never knows of his mission and is then raised on Gaia as a thief and joins Tantalus. After the unsuccessful mission to kidnap the princess at the game's opening, Zidane and his party go on an adventure. At first it starts out with Zidane and his friends simply trying to reach the city of Lindblum unscathed, but eventually it becomes an epic adventure where Zidane must rescue Gaia from a horrible fate.
Side Note: The 3rd Angel of Death (i.e. Zidane's replacement) was meant to be a female Genome named Mikoto (her name is one way of saying "angel" in Japanese). However, her services were never needed, as the player discovers later in the game.